Further thoughts on The Writers Strike and Unions In The 21st Century
Last night I wrote about the WGA writers strike, questioning if it is really in the best interest of the average working person to support a group of people whose job is to produce content that props up the narrative of the capitalist class. Or at the very least, produces content that distracts and dumbs down the masses rather than educating and inspiring the working class. I was really just asking questions, hoping I might get some feedback that would help me clarify my own attitudes on the strike. I was actually hoping against hope that one of those writers currently on strike might respond to my concerns in a manner that put them to rest. Or that someone might share an article one of the writers had written that addressed some of those concerns.
Unfortunately, what little feedback I’ve received so far did not step outside of conventional wisdom. And as the questions I raised were — I think — novel ones, there is nothing that can be pulled out of the conventional cliché book that could provide a real answer to my concerns.
I think the problem is I’m looking at the problems humanity faces today and don’t see any answers in what has been tried before. As much as I admire and have drawn inspiration from the labor movement and other movements of the past, all of the sacrifices and bloodshed labor leaders and the rank and file have been a part of have led us to where we are now. And where we are now, and where we have been for the entirety of my working life, is in a battle in which labor is consistently being beaten back.
The obvious fallback solution is that labor needs to embrace unions once more and learn to flex its muscles. Many calls have been made for a general strike, and time after time those who call for general strikes or mass movements express frustration when the people don’t respond in anything close to meaningful numbers. Rather than banging our heads against the wall and again trying tactics that have not worked in nearly a hundred years, perhaps it is best to evolve our tactics, to realize capital has convinced us to fight the battle on its terms and has rigged the game so that we cannot possibly win. It’s a sucker’s game and we — labor — are the suckers.
The problem started long ago. 80 to 100 years ago, labor was strong, both of necessity and because corporate capitalism was not yet as entrenched in our culture as it is now. 100 years ago, our culture was heavily influenced by Christianity, old-world attitudes brought over by European immigrants, and farmers who were more connected to nature than to the propaganda pushers in the press and elsewhere. Writers and thinkers were not controlled the way they are now and as a result there was a vibrant diversity of ideas. And virtually everybody who wrote or thought, from George Bernard Shaw to Albert Einstein, from Hemingway to London, Gandhi To MLK, Helen Keller, Oscar Wilde, Picasso, Debs, DuBois, Steinbeck, Orwell, et al,was a socialist. Capital was on its back foot against a very strong and politically conscious labor movement. Labor was willing to fight the fight, regardless of the sacrifices it would have to endure. So capital retreated. And retrenched. It made concessions to labor. But as it did, it planned for the future.
For all the courage labor was capable of, it was not great at playing the long game. All it wanted, after all, was a fair shake. It was incapable of thinking, as the capitalists did, of conniving and strategizing. Labor just wanted enough of the wealth that it could go about enjoying their lives and spending some free time with their families. Capital, however, is never content with “enough”. Capital wants only one thing, “more”. If it gets more concessions from labor, you know what it wants? More. Always more.
Normal people are incapable of thinking like that, which is why labor was willing to compromise with capital. They thought they were dealing with an honest partner and that the concessions they had won would lead to more and more equality and sharing. Starving people — and many among the working class were never far from starvation — are more concerned with immediate improvements than with the long game.
So labor took concessions from capital and took it to mean that they had won a hard-fought but honest battle. Labor did not realize that capital was shaping up the battlefield for future conflicts. Labor got rights and increased wages, but in turn it allowed the laws of conflict to be written by a government that was still in the hands of capital. The fair fight labor anticipated gradually revealed itself to be more and more tilted in the favor of capital. U.S. labor, basking in the relative wealth of not only their own labor but the labor of exploited foreign workers, became content. And becoming content, labor became docile and complicit.
Labor believed a mutually beneficial relationship was possible. Capital believed a mutually beneficial relationship with labor was NECESSARY, at least temporarily. Labor rested, capital plotted. The result is that for the last forty years, labor has done little to nothing except retreat while capital has been strengthening its grip on everything. Everything. Perhaps worse than anything, capital has attained absolute narrative control. The modern-day equivalents of free thinkers like Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlo have been pushed to the extreme margins. No longer will an artist, author, or thinker be permitted to speak outside the box and be covered by the corporate media. Capital has won. And not only has it beaten labor on the economic battlefield, it has indoctrinated labor into capitalist narratives. It has subjugated labor not merely physically but mentally and even spiritually.
The fight should not be and should never have been about labor insisting on equality with capital. The two can only exist together with labor as the slave to capital. So when I hear someone’s knee-jerk reaction that we should support the writers strike against the big studios, I can’t help thinking that’s not the right way to frame the argument. If the writers win every concession they ask for, they will only go back to making money for and perpetuating the ideology of their wage masters. Would I boycott McDonald’s in support of their workers in case of a strike? It’s a moot point because I’m already boycotting McDonald’s because they’re an evil corporation that serves unhealthy food that stands in the place of where a healthy food chain should exist. Same thing with the striking writers: it is not a matter of supporting workers in an unhealthy corporate environment, it is looking for ways to support writers while not supporting the corporations that grow wealthy and strong off of their labor.
And so in all areas of economic exchange. Labor should be finding every alternative it can to prevent itself from strengthening capital. It should look to eliminate capital from acting as the middle man as much as possible and deal as directly as it can with other workers. This means co-ops, this means employee-owned businesses, this means mom and pop stores, it means bartering, it means using cash instead of credit cards, it means not buying what you don’t need, it means building communities that are not dependent on corporations. It means resisting the same kind of path of least resistance that leads cattle to the killing floor.
This is a very real challenge but it is THE challenge we must accept if we want to support labor (i.e. workers, (i.e. virtually everybody we’ve ever met)). We must do whatever we can to support labor while opposing capital. The demands of the Writers Guild of America, as best as I am able to research, relate only to wages and working conditions for the workers. Nothing is mentioned of artistic freedom. Therefore, even if every demand is acceded to, the value of the work of the writers will ultimately be to capital, not labor. The writers will just be treated a little bit better to do their bidding, that is all.
Modern corporate capital is even worse than the capital opposed by Eugene V. Debbs, Samuel Gompers, Fanny Sellins, Mother Jones and others, because modern capitalism is the systematization of human greed. And it is global. Where once the extremely rich among us had some ability to exercise their human impulses, now even they are helpless to work against corporate machinery that exists only to strengthen the machine. There is no humanity left in corporate capitalism, just simulacra of human values. Tolerance in place of equality, cheerfulness for genuine concern, political correctness for honesty.
Labor’s struggle in the 21st Century as I see it is not for a seat at the table but to build its own table at which it does not have to bargain with capital to be fed. Labor should not concern itself with getting capital to make concessions, it needs to have the power to makes the decisions. And the only way to do that is to demonstrate that labor does not need capital and that it will not permit capital to buy it off.
To do this will require sacrifices comparable to prior labor movements. And in many areas it will not immediately be possible for labor to exist without corporations. But it should be made clear that where it is impossible for labor to exist without capital that it is the relationship of the slave to a master: it is a relationship imposed upon labor by those who would be their masters.
This is the narrative that needs to be spoken about and written about. It is a narrative that writers working in the service of capital will never be permitted to write. This is why I find the writers strike, and indeed much of labors aspirations in the current environment, to be irrelevant. It is the struggle of a slave who wishes to gain slightly better treatment from his master. As a laborer myself, I find this to be intolerable.